This, and so much more
by storiesseldomtold
Summary: Outlaw Queen AU: After Daniel's death, Regina feels like she doesn't belong in her hometown anymore. She turns over a new leaf and travels to Puerto Rico to do some volunteering. The new orphanage is funded by a British company with an intruiging CEO. While working there, Regina finds the thing she least expected to find on a distant island in the Caribbean Sea: love.
1. Prologue

_A/N: Hey everyone, this is a new fic I'm writing. Here's the prologue for you! I hope to keep the updates coming as fast as I can, but unfortunately I do things besides writing, so I can't promise you anything. I hope you'll enjoy though!_

* * *

 **Prologue**

" _Sweetheart, after I'm gone…"_

" _Daniel, no, don't say that," she argued._

" _Regina, please let me finish."_

 _She took his hand in hers and stroked it gently with her thumb, and nodded._

" _Listen to me. After I'm gone, I want you to love again. I don't want to, would never want to leave you alone, but I'll have to. In just a short time. And I'm not asking you to forget about me immediately–"_

 _She squeezed his hand and stroked his arm, relishing in the possibility of being with him, for the last days they had together, "Daniel, I will_ never _forget about you. You can't ask that of me. I love you. And I always will."_

 _He started to chuckle, but erupted in a heavy cough instead. Regina grabbed a tissue and held it in front of his mouth, catching the blood coming from his throat. The coughing ceased and he settled back down against the soft pillow of his hospital bed._

" _Okay, then always remember me. But also remember this: I don't want you staying behind because of me. If someone comes forward who wants to earn your heart, of whom you think that he is capable of earning it, then please, give it to him. He'll be a good guy. I mean, you have great taste in men." She smiled and cupped his cheek. "But maybe pick one that won't die five years after you marry him."_

 _She shook her head, tears building in her eyes. "I don't want to love you again."_

" _Oh, but you will. You will find someone, and they will be everything you've ever hoped for."_

" _But–"_

 _He silenced her by laying his thumb on her lips. "You have so much love to give." He urged her to lay her head in his lap and she did, silently sobbing against his hospital gown. He smelled of disinfectant. Like everything else in this goddamn hospital._

 _So she took him home._

* * *

And now, she's sitting in her empty house, on her cold sofa, staring at the blank wall, thinking about her hollow life. It has been 14 months since Daniel died, just three days after she took him home. He had died in his sleep. She hopes he didn't suffer, knowing damn well he suffered in that whole year in which he tried fighting it, but she's just too frightened to admit it. He didn't deserve this, didn't deserve to die in such a horrid and painful way. He was supposed to be with her until they would both die of old age, together. But she knows life isn't like that, isn't that pretty picture she had in mind. _Had_ in mind, because that's no longer her idea of life. Life is bitter, and cruel, and unfair.

But she knows that it doesn't _have_ to be that way. The time she experienced with Daniel was the best in her life. Though she doubts she will ever live on such a high cloud again, she does think that it can be better than _this_. All she does is work, sleep, and eat. Her social life consists of visiting her old friends Mary Margaret and David and her godson Neal, going to dinner with her best friend Emma, the town's sheriff, at Granny's, and chatting with some of her colleagues during lunch breaks.

There _has_ to be more to life. So she starts to ponder about what she could do to make her life more interesting, more exciting. She could take on a new adventurous hobby, like rafting or mountaineering. Except there are no wild rivers or challenging mountains nearby. Change jobs maybe? But there's nothing around here she likes besides teaching. She can't think of a single thing that would cheer her up a bit.

And then one day, while cleaning up the attic, she finds an old globe of Daniel's behind a musty curtain. _I can go anywhere I want in the world. Do anything I want._

She comes up with the idea while playing with Neal and his squeaky ducky, and after reading some of her father's old journals.

She wants to go to her father's home country and explore this island completely unknown to her. And she wants to do something with children. So why not combine both?

* * *

So here she is. Sitting at the airport, waiting at gate 43 for boarding to start. She will be flying to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she'll travel further to Cataño, a coastal town just outside of the capital. After researching some teaching jobs, she found an even more interesting offer: setting up an orphanage. After the old building burnt down, the locals were looking for volunteers to help them build a new one. When a British corporation was willing to fund the new orphanage, they were ready to start. All they needed was some extra help, help Regina was more than willing to give for such a wonderful cause. They would give her food and shelter in return.

Her cat Ursula will stay with Emma for the next few… weeks, months? She doesn't even know. All she knows is that she's more than ready to go on this adventure.

 _Who knows what's still in store for me?_

What indeed.

* * *

 _A/N: Please review! It means the world to me! Love_


	2. Chapter 1

_A/N: Here's the first real chapter after the prologue! There's a little Spanish in here, from my own limited knowledge and some translating websites, so my apologies if there are any mistakes in there. Enjoy, sweethearts._

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

It wasn't a very long flight, but still an incredibly boring one. Regina didn't bring any books with her – too heavy –, and she didn't buy any magazines at the airport store – she would feel like a travel cliché if she read National Geographic, and is above the cheap gossip of Us Weekly, though she wishes now she had succumbed to her urge for gossip. So she eats way too salty crisps, watches a movie ( _The Princess Bride – at least they have a good taste in movies up here_ ), and tries to sleep while a toddler cries out for his mother.

 _I have never cried out for my mother_ … she thinks. Even if she had, her mother wouldn't have come anyway, she never cared about her, it was the nanny (and her father) who raised her. Regina's mother, Cora, left her and her father when she was ten years old. Because she didn't love them. She had never loved Henry, Regina's father, she said. She only married him because he had money. And she had tried to love Regina, but she just couldn't. "If you had listened to me and had done as I said, you would have accomplished great things, Regina." She was ten then. _What would mother think of me now?_ she wondered, but she didn't really care. She left them, and Regina was glad that she hadn't heard from her since. Life with her father was good. At least they loved each other. He died from a stroke when she was 22. His death had been really hard on her, but having just met Daniel, he softened the blow. Unfortunately, there wasn't anybody to really do that for her now.

She shakes it all off, grabs some gum and pops it into her mouth; they were starting to land and her ears were hurting like hell.

" _We will be landing in San Juan shortly, please fasten your seatbelts. It's 3.15 PM and the sun is up and shining."_

* * *

"Cataño?" she says. She wishes she'd learned Spanish before she came here. Her father was fluent – of course, it was one of his native languages – but Regina was never all too keen to learn it. She regrets that now. So she'll stumble over her words, and try to make the people understand her in English and terrible Spanish – well, some words at best.

"Tomar el transbordador. Ahí," the taxi driver tells her, while pointing to his left. "Es más barato."

 _Oh my god, I cannot do this. I should have researched online how to get there._

"I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish. No hablo español. Uh, inglés?"

"Take the ferry, it's cheaper," he says. "You walk down that road, and you'll reach it."

She nods, smiling, "Thank you so much."

"What brings you to Cataño?" he asks. She guesses he's about sixty years old. He has a content expression on his face, though vague through the smoke of his cigarette.

"The orphanage in Cataño, it burnt down a while ago. I'm here to help build up the new one."

He puts out his cigarette in the ashtray in the car and chuckles. "Ah muchacha, get in the car, I'll take you there. Anyone who's here to help, gets a free ride from me."

"Really? I'll pay you, it's not a problem, I–"

"Oh no, it's fine. Get in."

While driving, he tells her about the devastation it caused the village. His ninety-year-old mother still lives in Cataño, not far from the site of the orphanage. The whole village helped clean up the site after the fire department was finished with it, trying to save whatever could still be saved. Every household took in a child or multiple children who had now lost their home. It meant a great deal to all of them when "señor Locksley" wanted to invest in the new orphanage.

"What's he like, this Locksley?"

The man smiled, "Oh he's a very kind man, very generous too. Always smiling, always happy to help. He's staying with my mother. He wanted to be close to the site."

She was surprised, "Oh, he's here? Just for a few days then?"

"Oh no, señorita, he's always here. He's helping himself in the construction of the building. You'll meet him soon."

She hums a faint "wow". She was glad that this Locksley wanted to invest in this orphanage, but she was definitely impressed now.

"Almost there!"

* * *

A woman named Maria greeted her and helped her with her bag, even though she refused.

"Regina, you will be staying with me and my husband, Alejandro. We live down the road. Let's go and drop your bags? Ale doesn't speak English though."

Maria and Alejandro live in a cosy house with their dog, Luna, an old lady they picked up from the streets years ago. Their living room is filled with pictures of what Regina suspects to be their children and grandchildren.

Alejandro is sitting in his leather chair in front of the television, watching a soap in Spanish. He greets her with a nod and a hum. "Buenas tardes," Regina says.

Maria leads her to the back of the house, showing her to her room, which used to be their daughter's. It was a childlike and girly room, but she appreciates it nonetheless. A bed is a bed. "Thank you so much, Maria, for welcoming me into your home." Maria pats her arm, "It's the least I can do. Thank you for helping us out here, we can use all the help we can get."

* * *

After unpacking and changing into something more fit for this unexpected hot weather, she decides to take a walk down the street to check out the site of the orphanage. It's only a two-minute walk, so she can always get there in no time. The site looks deserted from afar, but when she gets closer she can see that the construction has already begun: the basement is almost finished. She takes a walk around the construction site, going in the direction of the small forest behind the lawn.

"Perdóname, siñora!" she hears from behind her. He's definitely not a native speaker. She'll play along as long as she can. Just for fun.

She turns around and sees an incredibly handsome man, clad in jeans and a white T-shirt. He looks a bit bewildered, unsure of what he should do. Or maybe that's just the Spanish holding him back. "Sí?"

"Uh, entrada prohibida… a personas no autorizadas."

Definitely not a native speaker. She's taking pity on him though, she wouldn't appreciate being in this situation. She smiles, "I'm sorry, I wasn't aware of the fact that I couldn't come here."

"Oh, American, that's lovely," he says while approaching her. He offers her his hand, "Nice to meet you, the name is Robin." She takes it, thinking _hm he's British_ and gives it a good shake. "Regina. I'm actually just exploring the grounds, I'm a volunteer here, starting tomorrow. Are you helping out with the orphanage as well?"

He nods, hesitating a bit before saying, "Yes, you could say that."

"Well, I'm glad I got to meet someone. Another volunteer, I mean. I think it's amazing that Mr Locksley wants to invest money into this project. He sounds like a good man. Have you met him already?"

Robin swallows, "Yes, I have. Have known him since he was a baby actually." They start walking back to the construction site.

"Really? So you grew up with him then?"

He chuckles, "Well, actually I grew up _as_ him."

 _British, man, kind_

She stops abruptly, while he turns around, facing her. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Mr Locksley! I didn't know what you looked like, I couldn't possibly have recog–"

He cuts her off and lays a hand on her arm, "Regina, it's completely fine. And call me Robin, we're colleagues now."

She tilts her head, "Aren't you technically my boss?"

"Technically, yes. But I'm not just here as the man who pays for this, I'm also here to work. So on that level, we're colleagues."

They started moving again, "I thought you would be older, that's probably why I didn't connect the dots. I didn't expect you to be…" _this handsome, this charming_ "this close to my age."

He lets out a laugh, "Yes, I get that quite a lot. But I'm me, and that's that."

"I think it's great, what you're doing."

"Thank you, milady." _Oh wow._ "You want to go meet the rest of our co-workers?" he asks with a wink.

"Lead the way, colleague."

* * *

Her fellow volunteers are a fun and diverse group of people. They were all sitting together in a container set up next to the construction site. Robin introduced her to all of them. There's Archie, a fellow American. He's a therapist in Seattle, and needed a break after a case that had affected him greatly. He also brought his Dalmatian, Pongo, to stay. The next one to introduce herself was Granny. Regina assumed that wasn't her real name, but she noticed that everyone called her that, so she just went along with it. She's retired, used to own a diner in small town in Maine, now run by her granddaughter, and she was bored, so she decided to volunteer somewhere, for a good cause. A girl from New-Zealand shook her hand next, telling Regina her name is Kathleen Tinker, but that everything calls her Tink. She's still very young, early twenties, just got her university degree, but not quite ready to start working yet; she wants to see the world first. There was an older man seated in the corner, playing Solitaire. Regina had gone up to him and he introduced himself as Marco, a carpenter from Italy. He hadn't worked in quite some time, but wanted to do something significant before he died. So he came here. He made Regina smile. The last on the team was a British curly redhead, called Zelena. Regina could immediately tell that she did not like Zelena, but she didn't know why. The way she acted around Robin suggested they were in a relationship? But Robin didn't seem to reciprocate her gestures. Why did she even care? She was here to work and to make some new friends. She wasn't interested in Robin. He would become her friend, but that's it. She wasn't here for more than that. Besides, he certainly didn't even think about her whatsoever.

But why was she feeling jealous of Zelena then?

 _Shake it off, Regina._ Luckily she got interrupted.

"Hi there! Remember me?" she heard coming from above her. She looked up and saw Tink's happy face smiling down at her. "Mind if I join you?"

"No, of course not. Sit down, take a drink." Tink settles next to her on the couch with her glass of wine and crosses her legs. "So… What brings you here, Regina? You haven't told me yet."

She swallows. Right. "I was just bored at home, bored at my job, and I wanted to do something else for a while."

"What did you do then?"

"I was a sales manager. I used to love doing it, but not anymore."

"What changed?"

What changed is that she didn't like doing anything anymore after Daniel's death. She felt like everything she did was in vain, because he wasn't there to see it. But when her troubled mind had started going back to normal, the feeling of boredom stayed. She didn't have Daniel to come home to every night and tell him about the meetings she had or the difficult clients she dealt with. Of course she had Emma, but it wasn't the same. So she wanted to go somewhere where she shared all of the events of the day with one group of people. She wants to live like this for a while, so she can get used to it, get used to not having one person – one Daniel to be specific – to come home to. It's a weird way of coping with her loss, some might say, but if it works for her, she'll be glad. But it's still hard to talk about it, especially to people she has known for less than an hour. It's too hard. So she lies.

"I got a new boss who was constantly breathing down my neck, I couldn't handle the stress, I'm afraid."

Tink pats her arm, "It's okay, you're out of there now." Regina nods and takes a sip.

Robin and Regina went the same way after their group spent the evening together – the others' host families were the other way. They had eaten tacos and talked some more.

"So how did you like the group?" he asked.

"They're all so different people, but I like them. I think we're going to have fun together."

He smiles at her then, "Yes, I hope so too." She stops then. "Well, this is me."

He lifts an eyebrow, "You're staying with Maria? She's an amazing woman. She cooks for the volunteers every Friday."

"Have you been here long?"

He angles his head, "About a week, I think. My men have been working on the basement. Ready to start with the ground floor now."

"And what do we, the volunteers that is, do while your men are still working on the construction of the building itself?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, we haven't told you yet. You'll plant the garden, play with the children, help with making meals… Just until the building is ready to be painted and furnished," he concludes with a smile.

"That sounds great. I'll see you tomorrow then, at 8, right?"

He nods, "Yes, 8 it is. I'll come by and pick you up, it's on the way anyway." He places his hand on Regina's shoulder, sliding swiftly down her upper arm, stopping just above her elbow. She gasps softly at the contact. She can't be the only one feeling this tingle, this… spark. She can feel it flowing from his hand into her arm.

"You'll do great here, Regina. And you'll meet the children tomorrow. They're a treasure, every single one of them."

"I'm looking forward to it. Good night, Mr Locksley," she says with a sly smile. He pinches her at that, "How many times do I need to tell you, it's–"

But looking up at her, he notices her smirk, and he chuckles, "Robin," they both say at the same time.

She steps aside then, immediately missing his warm hand on her now cold arm – it got a lot cooler during the evening – and she starts walking up the stairs to the porch. When she reaches the door, he's still standing there, looking up at her. "Good night, milady," he says, and walks away into the night, smiling at himself.

Regina finds it hard to fall asleep, her confused mind wandering to Robin. She convinces herself that it's not right, this shouldn't be happening. She vows to set her feelings – if you could even call it feelings – aside, and just work hard, starting tomorrow. Though she can't deny that it was the sweet sound of his "milady" that slowly lulls her to sleep.

* * *

 _A/N: Yay, OQ met! Please review, I appreciate it immensely!_


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